I touched Alton!
OK, I realized I haven't updated in like a billion years, but instead of one big long blurb I'm just going for the recent fun stuff. On Friday night, I volunteered at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum in their Ocean Hall. Normally I do this on alternate Sundays, but Friday was special. We had a Sustainable Seafood Tasting event, with ~25 of the top DC chefs...and Alton Brown was signing cookbooks!
So I got to be introduced and shake hands, wander around on his tour of the Ocean Hall, etc. What I learned, as he stared at the coelocanth - the bigger the scales, the less tasty the fish. Coelocanths never looked particularly good to me anyway. Their fins are too arm-y.
One of the best parts was that as volunteers, we did almost nothing. I directed guests (suckers paying $75 a head) to the wine, to the restroom, to some of the food stations, but generally I just ran around and ate things. OMG delicious cheese, ceviche, lobster rolls, octopus, trout, etc! And if any of you ever come to DC, go to Georgetown Cupcake for dessert - peanut butter ganache.
For all our "work", the volunteers were gifted with a cookbook from the chef of Restaurant Nora. Looks good! Maybe I'll try making something fancy.
I enjoy the Ocean Hall generally, but this was really super fun!
So I got to be introduced and shake hands, wander around on his tour of the Ocean Hall, etc. What I learned, as he stared at the coelocanth - the bigger the scales, the less tasty the fish. Coelocanths never looked particularly good to me anyway. Their fins are too arm-y.
One of the best parts was that as volunteers, we did almost nothing. I directed guests (suckers paying $75 a head) to the wine, to the restroom, to some of the food stations, but generally I just ran around and ate things. OMG delicious cheese, ceviche, lobster rolls, octopus, trout, etc! And if any of you ever come to DC, go to Georgetown Cupcake for dessert - peanut butter ganache.
For all our "work", the volunteers were gifted with a cookbook from the chef of Restaurant Nora. Looks good! Maybe I'll try making something fancy.
I enjoy the Ocean Hall generally, but this was really super fun!